As kinky as the title sounds we’ll get back to it shortly.  I was born in the 70′s so I remember the days before VCR’s, DVR’s and Tivo.  What this means for those of you who never grew up without them is that if you missed a TV show you were shit out of luck.  While this may seem random and ranty it made watching certain shows all the more important because once it was missed it was missed for good.  As a kid of the 70′s I grew up watching the Muppets on PBS and it was a special time because it was the only time that I could watch it.

The Muppet show was a special time and the Muppet movies even more so.  There was a special quality to the Muppets which really has been lost in modern-day television.

Needless to say (and say it anyway I will) I was excited to see a new muppet movie that was written by an actor whom I have come to really enjoy on his other show (How I Met Your Mother) Jason Segel.  Additionally it had Amy Adams and anyone that knows me well knows I get weak in the knees for red heads.  Now I must admit that I had a lingering doubt creeping in the back of my mind about the movie but I really wanted to give it a chance.

Well, it wasn’t a muppet movie.

All of the magic of the muppets was sucked out (just like “enriching” white bread) and the cold dead shell that was left over was nowhere near as good as the original.  To be honest I found the whole thing to be mean-spirited and frankly really cynical.  The basic gist of the story is that a young man (Gary) grows up with a brother (Walter) who doesn’t know he is a muppet.  Oh the muppet wonders why he never grows while his brother sprouts like a weed but doesn’t worry about why their skin isn’t the same.  Eventually they discover reruns of the original muppet show and now he has a dream!

We also meet our other main character “the girl friend” aka Amy Adams (Mary).  Her character is a school teacher who is teaching her Fourth grade class to change the oil on a car.  This is a woman who frankly can do anything and while she loves her boyfriend and his brother the muppet she is kind of tired of including him in all of their adventures.  This dynamic becomes a tipping point later in the movie when Gary forgets about an intimate dinner on and for their anniversary.

The main idea of the movie is that this “unhappy” trio are taking a vacation to Los Angles to visit the old Muppet Theater and Museum and to celebrate an anniversary for our human characters.  Needless to say the tour is a disappointment since the muppets disappeared into obscurity and as we find out the machinations of a greedy corporate owner that wants to drill for oil underneath the old theater.  What is the name of our evil corporation?  Richman Oil of course!  We discover this because Walter sneaks off during the tour to check out Kermit’s old office and this is also where we discover that our evil CEO (Tex Richman wouldn’t you know) cannot perform an evil laugh.  Seriously, every time he wants to laugh the evil laugh he screams out “EVIL LAUGH, EVIL LAUGH!”  At first I wasn’t even sure if he was commanding his minions to laugh evilly or if he just couldn’t do it himself.

Before the big trip to the old muppet theater there is a big song and dance number (reminiscent of Pleasantville) as the trio hits the road and we get to our first scene of mean spiritedness.  As the bus drives away one of the dancers decries that “they are gone!” and the crowd collapses to the ground in relief.  While I can appreciate the humor of the moment it really wasn’t anything but mean.

Sadly it is Walter who discovers the evil plan and once Gary and Mary are able to extract this information from him (sadly without sharp implements or water boarding techniques) they decide to reunite the Muppets.  So off they go to the home that polliwog and swine built.  When they arrive at the gates if green and pink they discover that even the mighty have fallen on hard times.  Kermit eventually invites everyone inside and the dastardly plan is revealed to him.  A mélange of  references to the 1980′s, none of which children watching the movie would ever understand.  We have the classic 80′s robot bring a tray of tab and original recipe coke spouting phrases that haven’t been uttered in 30 years and should probably never be said again.

A plan is hatched to reunite the band and yet more 80′s references.  To “save” time they decide to travel by map, insert the traveling powers of Indiana Jones all the way down to the thick red line connecting point A to B.  First stop is Fozzie Bear who with a serious case of abandonment has rebuilt the Moopets with the nastiest group of replacements ever.  It doesn’t take a lot of prompting for him to rejoin Kermit and crew on their quest to restore the muppets.

Gonzo has become the King of, well…toilets.  He has become extremely successful and after initially rejecting the offer Gonzo blows up his entire business to rejoin the gang.  Seriously he blows his entire stock to smithereens, I am not entirely sure that he gave enough time for his employees to evacuate the building but hey who cares about the little people.  Animal, when they find him,  has committed himself to an anger management retreat.  This I understand the least.

This is Animal, the fiendish drummer of the Muppets.  When drums are mentioned he starts to flip out and Jack Black of all fucking people tries to explain that this is one of Animals trigger words.  Now I was a fan of the show but I cannot remember for the life of me that he was furiously angry about drumming.  I remember him as being a furious drummer who seemed to enjoy his outlet.  After more trigger words are accidentally discovered the anger management seminar dissolves into a grand melee and our crew of heroes slink away.

All of the former muppets are acquired, all except one.  The diva of the muppets who has apparently gotten a job in Paris for a fashion magazine.  We have another movie homage at this point, this one being The Devil Wears Prada and she also apparently consumes copious amounts of donuts ooh sorry beignets.  While I can appreciate this joke as well, once again children in the audience will not get the joke. Ms. Piggy reluctantly agrees to join her former cast-mates but not before revealing the her and Kermit had a falling out of some kind which has not yet been repaired.

Now that the group is back together they only have a short time to repair the condemned theater and put on the show.  As they make their repairs Mary starts to get antsy about her upcoming anniversary dropping many unsubtle hints to Gary who is totally consumed with making sure his brother Walter is living his dream.  On the day of the anniversary Mary wants to see the glorious sights of L.A. and have a day of pampering before the romantic dinner.  Gary promises that he will be there for dinner and of course completely forgets about it and Mary has decided she has had enough.  She heads back to their home town without leaving a note.

This leads to a song where both brothers are questioning who they are; are they muppet or are they man?  While I get it was trying to be a touching song revealing that the brothers need to be who they are it comes off as goofy.  Which totally detracts from the significance.  Gary is of course crushed by the loss of Mary and reluctantly decides to stay for his brother.  Walter is starting to have an existential crisis of his own.  Why do you ask?  Because he has no talent to offer the show to help save the Muppet theater.  Mary is having a crisis of her own.  While she is happy to be home again it does nothing but rain and of course she misses her man.

The night of the benefit has arrived and the group realizes that they have no live audience to perform for and the Network that has agreed to run the telethon is starting to get cold feet because there isn’t a celebrity host.  Once again the movie crosses a line that shouldn’t have been crossed because they kidnap Jack Black and tie him to a chair on the stage.  While this is in the vein of wacky antics that the Muppets are known for it doesn’t capture the feel that is the Muppets.  The telethon starts off roughly but begins to pick up steam, enough steam to concern our villain who makes his way down to the theater to sabotage the show.

Our villain makes it down to the theater and manages to cut the power.  Mary who is watching from home sees this and makes her way back to the theater (traveling by map to make it in time) to jury-rig a solution and power is restored.  As the time to buy back the theater ticks by and they get oh so close to their dollar goal the villain manages to destroy the antenna on the roof bringing the show to a permanent stop.  As the crushing realization sets in that they did not make their goal and that Tex Richman has defeated them the credits roll.

Seriously.  The credits roll.  You do not discover that they actually win until about halfway through the credits when Richman gets hit in the head with a bowling ball and decides to return the theater to the muppets.  Seriously, if  you walked out as the credits are rolling you would never know that the good guys won.

I guess the lesson here is that it is in fact a detriment to try and be too clever.  You cannot mix so many disparate elements into one cohesive theme without lessening the value of the whole.

While out at another film I happened to catch the trailer for Gnomeo & Juliet which looked like it could be, at the very least amusing.  Sadly this was not to be, as the saying goes about “Too many cooks” it also applies to “Too many writers” as well.  This piece of shit film had nine writers involved, ten if you include Shakespeare who if he were alive today would be filing rape charges against the others.  Now if you went to High School in the US then you more than likely had to suffer through Shakespeare’s immortal tragedy about teenage angst Romeo and Juliet.  Probably even had to read it aloud in English class in 9th or 10th grade.  In fact I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone living in an English-speaking country that does not have even a passing familiarity of the play.

Which leads me to ask this question/rant to the writers: WHAT THE FUCK?!? WERE YOU HOME SCHOOLED BY HELEN KELLER? I HAVE HEARD OF PHONING IT IN BUT THIS IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS! IF SHAKESPEARE WEREN’T DEAD ALREADY HE WOULD KILL HIMSELF FROM SHAME…

To date there has only been one movie that I have walked out of and this POS was really close to being the 2nd.  When the credits finally rolled I found that I was actually quite angry, which I suspect is definitely not the response the writers were looking for.  I found myself thinking about the audience in the theater, since this was an animated movie it had a large percentage of children and suffering parents.  During the film I remember the theater being very quiet, in fact the only laugh I can recall was from a woman sitting next to me when she guffawed at a really stupid statement made by one of the characters.  For the record I didn’t laugh once.

The concept of the movie was a cute one; an attempt to update and make more accessible a classic piece of literature to a younger audience or at the very least make it more interesting to a teenage audience that increasingly does not like to read.  They even have a garden gnome making a statement at the beginning of the movie making a statement that this film will not be a standard representation of the classic play.  As the gnome is reading the statement the classic stage hook is attempting to pull him from the stage.  The ironies of a tired comedy trope being used in a movie about a tired play is sadly  not funny.  In fact if anything it annoyed the hell out of me.

The film itself opens on a pair of side-by-side houses (one red, one blue) and the mailboxes state they are 2b and not 2b.  Sadly this is not the last of the “homages” just the first is a series of really, really bad ones.  So instead of the Montague’s and the Capulet’s we have the red gnomes and blue gnomes (with matching gardens!).  At this point I experience a red out and I just wanted the movie to be over.  The movie basically dissolves into a series of vignettes of other movies.  We have Grease meets West Side Story meets a classic cheesy kung fu movie mixed with a basic flick about revenge with a dash of Shakespeare.

If anything if I didn’t know any better I would have chocked it up to a film school students tongue in cheek research project but this is sadly not the case.

“I got word that the Crab Sandwich on Nine Grain Bread made someone vomit. How do you handle these situations? Is your fish supposed to be fresh? Where does it come from? Appreciate your fast response.”

I love this one because of its randomness.  One of the companies that I work with (and has nothing to do with food service) forwarded this gem to me.

“Also, for test 4, I don’t know what my order number was for test 3 so I cannot search the orders and cancel. “

I have no words…

“I have not been able to speak with my owners yet about the inventory”

But they let you send this email eh?

“We have completed all test orders, but packing slips are not available for download.  How should we proceed?”

That’s amazing.  Most people cannot complete the test orders until after they have downloaded the packing-slips…

Re: test case 1, how do I “download and save to your desktop the invoice adjustment file with an .xls extension”?  (insert sounds of me bludgeoning my skull against my desk)

Hmm I wonder if there might be some hint in there somewhere…

Now with all things and especially people there are more than a few bad apples because lets face it, power corrupts even the most noble of ideals and people. From a Hollywood perspective a movie about good cops just doesn’t sell which (at least in my opinion) means almost every movie about cops involves corrupt cops.  Brooklyn’s Finest certainly lives up to this particular cliché, what we have is basically a movie about Three cops who in themselves are almost painfully clichéd.  We have the (White) drug task force cop, the Thirty year veteran cop (White) and the (Black) career advancement obsessed undercover cop.  All Three of our main characters are burn-outs which is so tired and played out it isn’t funny.

You can almost predict the motivations for each of our characters.  The opening scene involves our task force friend sitting in a parked car (parked in a cemetery no less) talking with a tweaked out criminal.  Eventually the task force cop shoots the tweaker in the face and robs him.  We soon discover that he is apparently trying to single-handedly overpopulate the world.  Seriously, he has somewhere between Eight and Fifteen children and he has taken to robbing drug dealers in an attempt to buy a larger home for his family.  Our veteran is in his last week on the job and finally the undercover cop is trying to get his Detectives First Class by any means necessary.

The main problem with this particular movie is that you are never provided with a reason to give a shit about any of the characters.  You have an obviously corrupt cop stealing from criminals for albeit an understandable reason, an old drunk who just does not give a shit anymore and just wants to finish his time in peace and quiet and our undercover cop who is so one-dimensional it is painful.

OK, the entire premise of this film is that the lives of our three main characters are intertwined even though they never actually meet.  Actually I might even go so far as to say the main premise of the movie is that the Brooklyn Projects are bad mmkay.  At one point there is even a voice over describing how the Brooklyn Projects (henceforth know as BKPJ) has the highest amounts of drug related crime, murder and kidnapping.  The length of shadow cast by this foreshadowing comment is astounding…

So the 3 stories are thus:

1 – The task force cop does not have enough stolen money to buy a house to move his enormous family into.  He keeps taking riskier and riskier actions to get the cash he needs, eventually even going into the BKPJ to murder and ripoff a group of drug-dealers after a raid gets canceled.  His partner knows he is on the ragged edge and tries to offer some help but can plainly see that a bad end is coming soon.

2 – The Veteran just wants to end his tour in peace and quiet.  Because of his breadth of experience he gets first one and then another rookie to tutor.  The first rookie quits because he feels the Veteran is not enough of a cop for him after the Veteran tries to explain that he (the rookie) shouldn’t go haring off after every crime he sees.  Ironically the first rookie gets his ass killed doing that very thing later in the movie.  The 2nd rookie is more his speed but eventually ends up shooting a kid in a Bodega after they get called to a petty theft complaint.  Additionally our Veteran has a thing for hookers, and one night as he is leaving her (the hookers) apartment he sees a girl (obviously fucked up on some kind of drug) being hustled into a Van.  Ooh! More foreshadowing, tastes like obvious…

3 – The undercover cop is working a case against the largest drug-dealer group in BKPJ.  One that his best friend (recently out of jail on a technicality) is in charge of.  Because the friend has been released the FBI now wants to run the undercover cop and build a case to get the friend back behind bars.  The U.C. is doing his best to keep his friend from their clutches and just before a big bust happens he tries to convince his friend to back off from the deal.  While he is trying to get his friend to walk away with him, a lesser member of the gang who has been sensing weakness in the leader kills him in a drive-by at that very moment.

So how does all of these stories tie up I hear you cry?  Well, basically in a stew of suck.  The task force cop tells his partner he is going for a drink, the partner says he will go with him.  As the task force cop drives away he shoots his partners tire out and then drives to the BKPJ.  Where he breaks into an apartment and starts mowing down the inhabitants.  After killing several he makes his way into the kitchen and discovers money in a washing machine.  As he is pulling out the huge stacks of cash a dealer he missed puts several bullets through his careless ass and runs away.

At the very same moment the U.C. drives to the BKPJ to put a few caps in the gangsters ass that killed his friend.  After shooting a few others he chases the killer into the street where he guns down the killer in the middle of the street.  To the amazement of no one the U.C. gets shot in the back by the task force cops partner who has just pulled up. 2 down 1 to go…

The last connection makes the least sense.  The Veteran successfully retires, however on his way out he notices a missing poster for the girl who was hustled into the van the last time he was busting his nut. After turning in his badge and gun he makes his way over to his favorite hookers place where she is just finishing up with another client.  As she is cleaning up she invites him in and gives him a gold watch as a present.  He tries to convince her to move to Connecticut with him and predictably she refuses.  Disconsolate at this turn of events he leaves and happens to see the same van and same girl being hustled into it.

He follows the van to the BKPJ, finds the apartment she is being held in (with several other girls) and kills the 2 men holding them.  After calling 911 the movie ends with him giving a statement to a cop and then slowly walking away.  Seriously this is how the movie ends…

Ten years after the divorce and the youngest son is now graduating from College and the family flies in to celebrate.  Feeling vulnerable our main character Jane (how perfectly a generic name for this movie) gets loaded on booze and bangs her ex-husband.  Now they originally got divorced after having had the necessary 3 children (2 girls and a boy) because he finds a younger, sexier woman.  The new wife is of course 20 years younger than he is has 1,000% more energy than he does and wants to have at least 2 of his children.  At this stage they have had 1 of the desired 2 (making a total of 4 for him).  Since he has no desire to actually raise his 5 year-old son (new) he is anxious to be the swinging bachelor again and sees his ex-wife in a brand new light.

Of course “the sex” is fabulous for both of them and now he is completely re-interested in old ground.  Since we have not had enough clichés at this point we discover she is having an addition added to her house (enter the “new” love interest Adam the architect).  She of course keeps forgetting that she has made an appointment with him (throughout the movie) and he is nothing but patient with her.

Since there isn’t an original bone in this movies body lets skip ahead a bit:

• She asks the psychiatrist if the affair is Ok? check!
• Her daughters fiancé catches them going up to a hotel room? check!
• He has a heart incident in the hotel room, and they have to call a doctor, and the fiancé sees the doctor going up? check, check, check!!!
• Ex-husband is sneaking phone calls the exact same way he did when he was cheating on her? check!
• Gaggle of girlfriends (hers) loves the idea of her cheating with her ex-husband on the younger woman who broke up her marriage? check!
• Adam continues to pursue her for a date even though she keeps blowing him off? check!
• The Ex fails to show up to an intimate dinner (his favorite) and he doesn’t call? check!
• Cheesy internet speak? oh my goodness check!
• Finally gives Adam a try, takes him to a party that the ex-husband will be at, while high, from a single hit of a joint? chhhheeeeeecccck!
• The new wife figures out that her philandering husband is fucking the ex-wife at that same party? check!
• Ex-husband leaves the new wife to get back with Jane? check!
• The children find it really strange? check!
• While taking a bathroom break during a video conference with Adam the ex-husband sneaks into her room naked, and Adam sees him, from the front and the back? big check!
• Jane finally comes clean with Adam about seeing her ex-husband? check!
• Adam is understanding? check!
• They still get together at the end of the movie? check!

Folks these are just the highlights of the clichés, chick flicks do not actually need to be this bad.

Basically since it is a Bazillion years in the future (the writers were very careful to be nonspecific) the Sun has used up almost all of its internal fuel and is starting to dim.  For those of you of a scientific bent, no the Sun has not become the red giant star every single astrophysicist since the dawn of astrophysics has claimed will happen it is in fact just fading away.  The Earth of course has started to freeze and is now a permanent Winter Wonderland.  Humanity has come up with a plan to jump-start the Sun again using what they refer to as a stellar bomb.  The idea being that they send the bomb into the heart of the Sun and like a shot of epinephrine fire up (heh) the Sun back to full brightness.

Our intrepid heroes are the 2nd team that has been sent to reboot our Mother star, Seven years after the first team was declared missing.  Seeing as flying anything near the Sun is inherently unwise the Icarus 2 is using the stellar bomb as a sunscreen.  It cleverly has panels that can be adjusted to reflect the dangerous rays and radiation from the fragile ship and crew.  Additionally the Icarus 2 is not only controlled by humans but has a semiautonomous computer system that maintains the flight path, and environmental systems to keep the crew alive.

Things are going swimmingly as the Icarus 2 approaches the planet Mercury, there is a minor scuffle between crew members as they enter the communications dead zone (output of the Sun yo) but all is resolved peacefully by the Sun obsessed on-board shrink.  This is one of the first things that started to bother me about this film.  Within the first 20 minutes the shrink is having a passionate discussion that darkness is the absence of light, that without the Sun we having and are nothing.  He is in fact so obsessed with the Sun that he spends a lot of the movie sitting in the observation room looking at it.  Trying to figure out how much he can reduce the filter without dying.  Eventually the on-board computer determines that he can withstand a 3.1% reduction of the filter for 30 seconds without permanent damage and he spends the remainder of the film with a badly sunburned and peeling face.

As they are approaching Mercury and are making their final preparations on their approach to the Sun when they pick-up an unexpected signal.  Much to their surprise the Icarus 1 was not in fact destroyed.  The distress signal puts our intrepid heroes into conflict.  With the crew almost evenly divided between completing the mission and delivering their bomb thus possibly saving humanity or solving the mystery and discovering what happened to the first crew.  As with all decisions of this kind it is left up to the meek science type.  You know the academic who hides behind everyone hoping and praying to God that no one notices him/her.

Predictably he relies on the numbers.  The mission as is does not have a 100% chance of success.  Too many variables and unknowns for that and as it should come to no surprise whatsoever it is decided that with the Icarus 1 still being intact 2 bombs are better than 1.  The course is altered and the die is cast.  Up until now the mission has been going smoothly, too smoothly.  The movie Gods have decreed that a detail must be missed.  Through all of the calculations no one thinks to reposition the sun shield and the delicate bits get damaged.

Three of the movable panels have been damaged and will no longer close and the Captain and the scientist are selected to go out and fix them.  At this point it is an old comedy trope, seriously if you cannot predict what is about to happen you need to leave my blog.  I mean it, get out.

To no one’s surprise (seriously if you are surprised you need to leave) the repairmen cannot be guaranteed shadow they are on the clock.  They manage to repair 2 of the panels before full sunlight and as they are repairing the 3rd the Sun creeps toward them.  The Captain sends our friendly neighborhood scientist back to the ship while he finishes the repair.  Since this isn’t a disaster flick the Captain (my Captain) manages to finish the repair just as the Sun hits that panel. He is of course consumed by flames and as he meets his fiery end the shrink is screaming into the radio for the Captain to tell him what he sees.  The Captain does a really good impression of well-done bacon and the scientist makes it safely back into the ship.

The movie Gods are vengeful.  They have decreed that not only is blood required, but there must also be suffering.  While trying to give the repair crew as much shade as possible the rotating radio masts are exposed to direct sunlight.  Of course they are burned out and somehow this causes fire (in a vacuum no less) to shoot down into the hydroponics/life support section of the ship and set it ablaze.  With their only source of renewable air burning and the integrity of the ship at risk they decide to release tanked O2 to cause a flash over in an attempt to burn out the fire.  Having been satiated the movie Gods allow the fire to be extinguished.

To the surprise of no one (really if you ARE surprised you NEED TO LEAVE) the intrepid crew does not have enough oxygen to complete their mission. Fingers are pointed, nasty names are called and the crew member responsible for forgetting to adjust the sunshield is now suicidal.  Our suicide risk is doped up and four of the remaining seven crew members prepare to board the Icarus 1.

Who goes?  I hear you ask.  The new Captain, the shrink, the engineer, and the scientist.  Once they are onboard the Icarus 1 the first thing they notice is that the power is off and everything is coated in a huge layer of dust and grit.  They decide to split up as they search the ship for survivors.  Anyone who has ever seen a horror movie already knows this is just a bad idea and will not, end well.

What they discover is that the hydroponic section is still intact and is in fact overgrown like crazy (they have air).  The semiautonomous computer systems brain has been removed from its cooling liquid and has since deep-fried itself.  Some of the crew members have apparently exposed themselves to 100% of the Suns magnificence and are now ashy statues and last but not least the Icarus 1 is dead in the water.

Since we have had about 5 minutes without a life being endangered something must happen!  Anyone that had money on the Icarus 2 suddenly and violently disengaging from Icarus 1 is now a winner.  That’s right sports fans the airlock is destroyed and our industrious away team is now fucked since there are 4 of them and only 1 space suit.  One would assume that there is now a rather violent game of rock/paper/space-your-ass but no there isn’t.  The psychiatrist decides to remain aboard the Icarus 1, the scientist gets the space suit and the engineer and new Captain have to tag-along for the ride.

Unsurprisingly the new Captain does not make it back to the Icarus 2 (loses his grip dontcha know) and floats off into space.  The scientist and engineer make it back safely (relatively) and there is a rather unpleasant discussion about who sabotaged the airlock and the fact that there are too many people and too little air.  A consensus is eventually reached that the suicidal crew member must be responsible (and sucking down too much o2) so the engineer goes down to the sickbay to shiv his ass only to discover someone has already beaten him to it.

Ok it was previously determined that there was only enough air left for 4 people to complete the mission.  On our roster we have the navigator, the scientist, the engineer and the life support specialist (aka the gardener) and unsurprisingly the computer advises that they cannot complete the mission because there will not be enough air to keep everyone alive.  The scientist argues with the computer that there are in fact only 4 people on board and the computer blithely informs him that there are in fact 5.

Things kind of go off the rails for me at this point.

The computer is smart enough to recognize the biometrics of its crew, but it doesn’t bother to tell anyone that they suddenly have a new crew member?  Who destroys the airlock? Who kills a crew member (the suicide risk)? And then kills another crew member (the gardener)?

Really?

Our mystery guest also manages to chase the scientist into the airlock and locks him in (or is it out?) after explaining that he (the weirdo) has spent the last few years speaking to God (aka the Sun) and that they are heretics and need to die.  The navigator is able to elude him by locking herself in with the stellar bomb.  Somehow our mystery guest is also able to extract the computer core from its cooling liquid (once again where the hell is the security to prevent this?) and the engineer dies while trying to get the computer back online.

The scientist jumps into a space suit, manages to open the airlock (exposing it to vacuum) and thanks to explosive decompression airs out the entire ship.  Pretty convenient way to get rid unexpected murderous guests… or is it?  The scientist makes his way to the bomb enters the airlock and discovers that he is not alone.  Both the navigator and the UMG have made it safely in.  Our hero manages to launch the bomb towards the sun, take out the UMG and save humanity.  The movie ends with a view of a snow covered field and a woman and child are playing in the snow.  They suddenly look up and we hear a voice over from the scientist telling his sister that she will know they succeeded if one day the Sun should shine a bit brighter.

1. All bed sheets in movie land are L shaped.  Long on her side short on his.
2. The Good Guy/Gal must always win (in the end).
3. Female genitalia is ok, male genitalia is forbidden.
4. The MPAA has at least one priest that helps to determine a film’s rating.
5. The truer the subject matter the less people care.

Why should you care about any of these facts?  Well, you should because with what is listed above some movies will suffer an ignominious death on the shoals of anonymity for violating some part of the Code of Movie Laws.  Additionally there are some movies that flirt with violating these laws which makes them very interesting (at least to me) and then just as they start to cross the Rubicon they swerve away and go from interesting to dull, lifeless and entirely to predictable.  Such is the case of Law Abiding Citizen…

Ok dear reader let us imagine for a moment that you are a mind bogglingly brilliant person, someone who has turned their brilliance to inventing all sorts of incredibly useful gadgets.  A genius’s genius, someone who if they put their mind to something could literally move a mountain.  Now imagine that you are working at home (not to mention male just in case any of the three people who read this blog are of the womanly variety) and there is a knock at the door.  You ask your beautiful daughter to go clean up as your darling wife announces that dinner is almost ready and go to answer the door.  Instead of your friendly neighbor Ezekiel coming to return the compound longbow that he borrowed to hunt gophers you meet Mr. Bat.

Mr. Bat is used to knock the shit out of you.  When you awaken you find that you have had your hands cable-tied together and duct tape has been put over your mouth.  Which makes me wonder is there nothing that duct tape is not useful for?  Seriously think about it.

Need to restrain someone?

Answer: duct tape.

Need to restrain a struggling child?

Answer: duct tape.

Significant other just won’t shut the fuck up?

Answer: duct  tape!

And the bad men who have tied you up stab you in the gut and proceed to rape and murder your family.  Of no surprise to anyone a deal is made so that one goes to jail for a few years and after making a deal to testify against his companion.  Of course the one that got the deal is the one responsible for the actual rape and murder the other?  Well he gets the death penalty. C’est la vie.

Dear reader, in truth I have had a lot of trouble writing this review as the movie itself is totally predictable since it stubbornly will not violate any of the Laws of Cinema. There really just isn’t anything to redeem this movie.  The main character (our widower) is a super genius who has a burning passion for revenge. On top of that he had ten years, let me repeat that for the deaf among you,

TEN YEARS

to plan your revenge.  Every last little detail; how you would torture the killer, your confession to the authorities, how in the end to take down the whole system because you know that the system will do and that the whole thing is broken.  But here we run into a problem, for this whole plan to work you have to be the good guy and in this movie you aren’t.  You have become the bad guy and your entire plan revolves around the fact that you have moved all of your businesses to Panama where supposedly your business transactions are unavailable to American authorities especially the D.A. who made the deal with the man who killed your family.

For a super genius this is a pretty stupid thing to hang your entire plan on, additionally not planning on the fact that the D.A. actually getting that information is also really stupid.  You create this involved and elaborate plan to extract  your revenge and you assume that you are totally bullet proof? Wow… you may as well just shoot yourself in face now.

So, you kill the killers, the Po-Po discover that you are behind it and you dangle the hope that you will give a full confession as long as you get an adjustable mattress and a nice meal from a fancy restaurant before 1:00 PM.  Being the incredible genius that you are you have of course anticipated that this will not happen and the authorities arrive to late and find the lawyer of the men who killed your family dead in a box that you buried a few days before.  The kicker of course being that you programmed his oxygen to shutoff at 1:00 PM and if they had gotten your food to you on time he would not be dead.  On top of that you have also arrange for the judge who presided over the trial of your family murderers to get a bullet through the face from her cellphone.  The cherry of that sundae of suck being that she gets it in front of the D.A. who made the original deal.

Of course your whole plan also depends on your being sent into solitary confinement so to do this you murder your cellmate.  How do you murder your cellmate?  Well you use the tools you have available, in this case the bone from your t-bone steak.  Kind of classy touch in retrospect but it does mean that you are now covered in arterial spray.  Well if it gets you what you want I guess it can’t be too bad.

Now why would anyone want to intentionally be sent into solitary?  I hear you ask.  Well it is because part of your plan means you need to be outside the prison walls and this means you had to tunnel into each solitary confinement cell so that you could build a hidden access door oh and this also means you needed to buy some commercial property near the prison so you could come and go unnoticed.

What else is in your little bag of tricks?  Well you demand that the D.A. let you go and drop all charges before morning or you will kill more people. predictably he refuses and calls in his entire office to tear apart your life they of course setup shop in the prison.  What is your plan?  Well you wired all of their cars to explode the moment someone leaves the prison grounds (invisible dog fence yo) which turned on at 6:00 AM that next morning.  Sadly more lawyers die… and the D.A. is really out to get you now.

You kill his boss just after the funeral for all of the dead lawyers.  The D.A. of course manages to identify properly that you bought despite the fact that you moved all of your business records to Panama and they unravel your entire plan.  They figure out that you tunneled into prison, that you have been able to leave whenever you want to and that you have also scored a job cleaning the Governors mansion.  In your crusade to destroy the system you have come up with the really cool plan to blow up most of the people responsible for Governing the state of Massachusetts.  Since the D.A. and the Po Po have tumbled to your plan they find the bomb you left and manage to remove it from the building and to leave it as a little present in your cell.  After a little power play between you and the D.A. (who was waiting in your cell) you basically tell him to fuck off and dial your bomb.  He runs away and you die.

Now if you were really that fucking smart, why didn’t you assume they would find your records?  Why didn’t you oh I don’t know expect them to figure everything out and put a device that would set off the bomb if someone moved the fucking thing after you armed it?

These are easy questions to answer.  Do you want the answer kiddies?  Well that is because you aren’t the good guy.  Remember, the American movie going audience doesn’t like it when the bad guy wins.  So the writers had to put in an easy out for the good guys.  You had to assume they would never be smart enough to get your business records and that they wouldn’t ever be smart enough to figure out your plan because the bad guy (even if he is actually right) can never EVER win.  Why?  Because that would lead audiences to remember the real world.

I am a bit of an indifferent reader of comics, however occasionally I find myself in a comic book store perusing the stacks for that one diamond among the rough. On one of those rare occasions I found a title called 30 Days of Night which turned out to be a comic about a small town at the top of the world which has the unfortunate distinction of becoming an all-you-can-eat-buffet for vampires.  The artwork was brutal in its minimalism and the lettering was severe in the extreme (if somewhat hard to read). Needless to say I really did enjoy it quite a bit so I was pretty excited to see it turned into a movie.

Now there is a tradition of turning comics into movies.  There have been a few notable successes: Spider Man & Spider Man 2, Superman 1 through 3  and a few others.  However most of the time something gets lost in translation and a good read becomes a lousy movie.

Our story is about a small town in Alaska named Barrow which has the dubious honor of being located at the top of the world and is known for having extended periods of night.  30 days of Night to be precise.  This is of course advantageous if you happen to be a creature of the night with time on your hands. The story revolves around an idea that a younger vampire has about having a good time hunting people without having to worry about the world finding out that vampires actually exist. In the comic there is a small group of people who do in fact know that vampires are real and they learn of the plan to gang rape the town of Barrow and they dispatch one of their own to get video proof of the attack. This is an important fact to remember for later.

Now a good orgy takes preparation and so our intrepid party goers want to keep interruptions to a minimum so they send in a minion to prepare the way.  The minion, who has been promised immortality goes into town and manages to steal all of the cell and satellite phones from the town and burns them.  He also kills all the dogs in town as well.  Why the dogs I hear you ask?  Sled dogs baby, sled dogs.  It may be 800 miles to the nearest town but we don’t want anyone leaving the party early.  Never mind that the minion does nothing about the snow mobiles or other forms of transportation (in the movie at least).  Eventually the long night starts to settle in and the minion of course gets in trouble at the last-minute,  gets arrested by our hero Sheriff Eben and spends the remainder of his short time on Earth stuck in a jail cell.  Sadly he does not get his promised immortality guess you just can’t trust a vampire.  Who knew?

In the comic Eden and Stella are still married and are Sheriff and Deputy respectively.  In the movie they are divorced and now Stella is a Fire Marshall who is in town to certify fire safety equipment and since she does not want to stay in Barrow for the long night she is trying to make sure she catches the last flight out-of-town.  As these things go she of course has a traffic accident, misses the plane and is now stuck in town for the next 30 days.  Then again we wouldn’t have a movie without this little plot twist now would we?

Any-stuck-in-the-fucking-frozen-wasteland-that-is-the-arctic the town starts to discover all sorts of strange events as night has settled in and the vampires are starting to play.  The local telecom office gets destroyed, the power station goes up in smoke and people on the edge of town start disappearing right in front of other people.  Ok, let me propose a scenario for you.  You find yourself leaving work at the pipeline with Two of your coworkers for a drunken night of debauchery (hey it is a long cold night) and as you stumble along talking about all of the naughty things you intend to do to your companions you suddenly hear a noise!  Gasp!  As you discuss whether or not you should investigate the sound (hint you shouldn’t) one of you suddenly disappears in front of your very eyes.

Poof, gone.  What would you do?

Would you do nothing?

Would you stand around like a moron wondering “Hey where did Bob go?”

Would you still investigate the sound anyway?

Would you run like hell?

Would you knowing that the town was about to be devastated by a vampire attack pour gasoline on yourself and go out in a blaze of glory roman candle style?

If you seriously considered the first Three options you would not survive a vampire attack and would probably be the First to die.  For those of you who chose the Fourth option I applaud your survival instincts but you are as good as dead anyway. Those who chose the Fifth option you should be applauded for your foresight in knowing that should your town be attacked by vampires you are basically fucked and might as well make as dramatic an exit as possible.

So, the vampires are gang raping the town and a handful of survivors find themselves hiding in an attic of a house that has been closed up for the winter. Here we have the first place that made me scratch my head in wonder.  The owner went South for the winter.  What are they going to do for food? I mean if I was leaving town for a season I wouldn’t leave the freezer stocked with food (not that the town has any power to begin with).  Also, what are they going to do if they need to use a toilet?  Ten people stuck in an attic trying to avoid vampires that are going house to house aren’t exactly going to go downstairs every time they need to take a shit.  Not to mention the fact that the entire house doesn’t have any heat.  Come to think of it, water is going to be an issue as well since it is fucking Alaska in the middle of winter and they are Three miles from the MOTHERFUCKING ARCTIC CIRCLE… but I digress.

Eventually the survivors decide they need to leave their hidey hole and wait for a whiteout to make their way to the general store to score some food and supplies.  They also decide to that they need to make their way to the only building that has power located on the edge of town.  A somewhat fortress like building called the Utiladoor.  This is yet another place where the movie and the comic diverge.  Right around the time the survivors are considering their options in the comic a helicopter flies to the town and records the vampire attack from the air (this does not happen in the movie).  By this time the older vampires have made their way to Barrow to clean up the mess and to also teach an important lesson to the younger vampires.  Which is that you have to follow the rules.  The vampire leader rips the younger vampire a new one (literally) and decides that the town needs to be destroyed to cover up the evidence before the sun was due to make another appearance.  After teaching the lesson and because vampires are total badasses they manage to damage the chopper and cause it to crash.

Now you might be wondering as to why I am mentioning some of the key differences between the movie and the comic.  Well, I feel the need to do so because in the comic these little differences make the story interesting and give it a sense of continuity.  In the movie you never really understand the motivation of the vampires to even go to Barrow, seriously it is never really explained why they were even there.

In the movie the vampires eventually get bored and decide to break into the pipe line and let the town fill with crude oil to cover up the massacre.  This isn’t a terrible idea however I do need to point out that crude oil will not catch fire by lighting a match and tossing it.  It actually takes quite a bit of work to get crude oil to burn.  Now I hear you cry “But what about oil rig fires huh?  Those fuckers go up in flames at the drop of a hat”.  Well I do need to point out that in almost all of those cases the rig exploded because of uncontrolled natural gas being exposed to an ignition source.  Once the crude reaches the critical temperature do to the heat and flames it will start burning and once it starts it is very hard to put out.

Well hollywood being hollywood the vampire lights a match and tosses it in and the oil of course catches fire and the town starts to burn.  The Sheriff gets an idea and decides to infect himself with the blood of a vampire he had recently decapitated. His plan is to go and challenge the leader of the vampires to a fight so that the others can get out-of-town safely and wait for the sun to reappear.  Eben eventually manages to defeat the leader and the other vampires scatter into the snowy wastes. After a heartwarming reunion with Stella they both go and decide to watch the sunrise one last time (literally for Eben).

And the credits roll…

This movie manages to take an interesting story about survival and sucks all the life out of it (hah a vampire joke get it?) and turns a good story into a rather boring facsimile of itself.  Now for todays lesson:  When faced with an onslaught of your town during the long Night by rampaging vampires you should suit up suicide bomber style and take a few of the motherfuckers with you.

Now this particular flick has a very loose grasp of time, kind of like how a person in the middle of a psychotic break has a loose grasp of reality.  It is incredibly easy to assume that the entire movie happens in a Three day time span instead of the handful of weeks that actually pass.  The movie opens with a teenage girl (not Molly) who is following rope with creepy post-it notes on it.  Along the lines of “A little further” and “A Surprise is Waiting (my cock)“.

She eventually makes her way to a creepy run-down shack where she is surprised by her boyfriend who gives her a heart-shaped necklace.  As they make kissy noises the girl’s father busts in and breaks up the love fest.  The father snatches her away and forces her into his truck where he proceeds to ramble about how she is shortly going to be 18 and that the darkness is coming to get her and that he can’t allow that etc etc etc and then drives his pickup through a red light and gets t-boned by a semi.

Daddy and daughter are dead and we fade to black.

We come back to the movie and Molly (Haley Bennett) is getting ready for school.  Dad (Jake Weber) asks if she is excited to start at a new school and Molly gives a non-committal answer (teenagers gotta love’em).  We then find out that Molly and Dad have moved from Boston to start afresh and we also discover that Molly has a crazy mother.  Not the typical crazy mother everyone on the planet has (Love you Mom!) but a truly bat-shit, drool on yourself crazy mother.  In fact we discover that they moved away from Boston after Mom tried to save Molly by stabbing her in the chest.  And now we enter the land of Irony, we soon find out that by moving away from Boston they have moved closer to the mental hospital where Mom is currently residing.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, can we say fore-shadowing?  I think we can!  Come one sound it out Four-shad-oh-ing.

Anyone that didn’t see Molly’s Mom making an appearance in this movie please raise your hands.  Ok, I am going to need those of you who raised their hands to walk over to the wall over there, close your eyes and start banging your head against the wall until you have learned your lesson.

Molly heads off to school at Huntington Prep and where we discover that she is a 4.0 student and that she has an appointment with the school shrink during 6th period.  Her first class is comparative literature where they are making their way through…

Anyone?

Anyone?

That’s right Paradise Lost!  Give yourself a gold star.

We also meet Molly’s first friend at Huntington Alexis (Shanna Collins) who also happens to be the lone Christian in a sea of heathens and on their way to class she asks Molly if she has been saved.  (Insert sound of squealing tires) Whoa!  Wait a minute, your first question to someone whom you have never met before is “Have you been saved?”  Really?  How about trying one of these other uncomfortable ice-breakers instead:

• “Have you ever been  gang raped by Presbyterians?”
• “Axe murder anyone today?”
• “Don’t you hate it when you catch a shot of semen in the eye?”
• “Ever been tag-teamed by midgets?”

Molly is of course non-committal and in to class they go where she sees Joseph aka the Love Interest (Chace Crawford).  Joseph has a big smile for Molly and predictably upsets his current girlfriend Suzie (AnnaLynne McCord).  Class moves along and we fast forward to lunch where Molly is in line with the Missionary (aka Alexis) and we see some cool kids chuckling at the duo Alexis says “Don’t worry they’re laughing at me.  Because of my close personal relationship with Jesus.”  At this point I began to wonder how close a personal relationship with Jesus she has.  I mean is a just friends thing?  Or maybe she wants to but Jesus really wants to wait or maybe she just has a crucifix shaped dildo in her bedside drawer.

6th period rolls around and Molly flounces off to see the shrink where we discover that Molly’s Mom tried to kill her in a bathroom and how this has horribly fucked up Molly.  On her way out of the office she sees Leah (Shannon Woodard) more on her later lazing on the couch.  The rest of the day goes smoothly and we find Molly walking home and we see Joseph roll up in his truck and offer her a ride on his cock.  She politely declines stating that she thinks Suzie wouldn’t approve of this course of action.  Molly gets home has a flashback/freak out and goes to bed.

The next day rolls around and we find Molly back in Comp. Lit. and the teacher who feels his students are retards is handing out bibles to the class because he feels they are retards that the students do not have enough of a background to truly understand Paradise Lost.  Alexis of course objects to the fact that the teacher is calling the Bible a piece of literature.  Molly takes her copy and copious amounts of blood starts gushing from her nose and down her face.  She gets rushed off to the bathroom where she has yet another freak out and Alexis eventually brings her a new shirt.  Molly goes home, has another psychotic episode in the bathroom, calls out for her father and then faints.

Back at school Molly runs into Joseph who invites her to a party at his parents place and he writes the access code on her hand.  Leah catches up with Molly at lunch and says that she will be happy to drive her to the party.  Night falls, Molly meets up with Leah and off they go and this is where we find out that Leah has issues with anger and this is why she has to see the shrink.  After a few minutes of wheedling Molly reveals that her mother tried to kill her and the conversation grinds to a predictable halt.

They get into the party, Joseph steers Molly away from Leah and we discover that he is rich, his parents are in Argentina and he has recently broken up with Suzie.  He gets called away for a burrito emergency and Molly wanders off and runs into Suzie.  OH NOES!?! We have the usual Mexican standoff, Suzie eventually tries to grab Molly who ends up breaking her wrist with a rather audible crack.  Molly freaks out tracks down Leah says she wants to leave and Leah basically tells her to fuck off.

So our heroine walks off all alone and tries to call Dad to come and get her.  Eventually she manages to call him tells him to come and get her at a BBQ joint and while crossing the street she sees her Mom standing behind her.  More freak out, she collapses and…

She wakes up sometime later and we discover that she has a growth in her nasal sinus and that it needs to be removed.  The doctor blithely says that it would cause her to hear things that weren’t there, see things that weren’t there and to have massive nose bleeds all the while pointing to an x-ray.  (Insert the sound of more squealing brakes) Sorry?  You diagnosed a growth in the nasal sinus from an x-ray?  Really?  Cause I am fairly certain the rest of the medical world would need at least a CAT scan or an MRI to do that.  Anyway… she has the operation and is cured.

She gets a visit from the Jesus freak who once again asks if she has been saved.  Alexis then goes on to talk about how her grandmother works at a hospital.  Molly returns to school and we see poor little Suzie with her arm in a sling slink away.  The rest of her day goes uneventfully and Molly makes her way home.  She calls Dad to tell him she is home and makes her way upstairs where she anyone? Anyone?

That’s right runs into Mom who begins to babble incoherently about how Molly is almost 18 and that she and her father had no choice but to make the deal with the Darkness.  That Molly had been still-born on the bathroom floor of a fast-food joint (auspicious sign that that is) and how a lady stepped out and offered them a deal to let Molly live.  Mom of course once again says that she needs to save Molly that a nice nurse who totally bought her bat-shit crazy story lets her out (to save Molly) goes for the killing stroke and Molly hurls her off the 2nd floor landing to a nasty death below.

Dad arrives home (with the police) Moms carcass is hauled off and Dad confirms that a religious nut did show up during the bathroom birth (insert flashback), that he thinks the woman was crazy and that he loves his daughter.  Molly brains dad (hey if you just offed one parent why not try for the whole set) with a Ming vase (which doesn’t break) and off she runs to…

Anyone?  Anyone?

The Jesus freak.  Molly begs to be saved, Alexis takes her into a church and brings her to a baptismal pool does the Jesus thing and then says to Molly “Remember my grandmother who works at the hospital?  Well she believed your Mother and she let her out to save you.  Now I have to save you…” and tries to drown Molly in the pool.  Molly eventually over powers Alexis, cracks her head (Alexis’s) against the wall and runs off.  For those keeping track at home this is 2 people who Molly has killed during the presentation of the movie.

As she runs outside she runs into Joseph who takes her back to his house so that they can run away together.  Cut to the Hartley homestead where Dad has been rudely awoken by a ringing doorbell.  He answers the door and sees Leah who happens to have a birthday present for Molly.  They both discover that neither of them knows where Molly is and Dad rushes out the door to begin his search.  Back to Molly who has now gotten very nervous since Joseph has been gone for about an hour.  She makes her way inside and eventually gets to a Solarium where she finds Joseph with a birthday cake.  Some conversation ensues and we discover that Joseph knows all about the darkness and that a special guest has been waiting for her.

Who is this special guest I hear you cry.  Well it is none other than the school shrink aka the religious nut job from the fast food joint (insert another flashback).  Molly gets freaked out grabs the knife (for the cutting of the cake) says she doesn’t want all the power she is promised and stabs herself in the chest.  At this point we get a real taste of the poor quality of the movie as we hear, actually hear the spring in the fake knife being compressed.  Additionally we can see that Molly has sunk the knife up to the handle in her chest and when we see it again only the tip of the knife has some goop on it.

Cut to graduation day and we see that Molly is Valedictorian says something about the future being bright and slinks off to a limo.

Roll the credits.

After acquiring some much-needed sleep I found myself thinking about seeing a movie.  Let me tell you the pickings were slim, very slim.  After reading a somewhat favorable review from a friend I found myself purchasing a ticket for Repo Men.  I will admit that I had a feeling of dread going into the theater itself.  I could feel what is left of my soul screaming at me to run for the hills and hide under something.  But “Damn the torpedoes!” I screamed at what was left of my soul and onward I recklessly plunged into the darkened theater.  The theater was actually dark by the way,  since it took for-fucking-ever to get my ticket, popcorn and beverage.  The trailers were almost finished when I finally made it to my seat.

The movie opens with Remy (Jude Law) typing up a memoir of sorts and he is talking about how he once read about a cat that someone named Schrödinger once owned.  That he put this cat in a box with a machine that randomly dispenses poison into the box thus killing the cat.  Now Remy isn’t that bright and he believes that Schrödinger actually killed his cat (Schrödinger’s not Remys).  As I was watching this happen I could feel the valiant last-ditch effort of my soul desperately pleading with my mind to get up and leave the theater.  But I said to my soul “shut the hell up I am trying to watch a fucking movie here” that sometimes movies start a little roughly but get better as they go.

Sadly Internet this was not the case.  Repo Men really wanted to be philosophical.  It desperately wanted to be philosophical, in fact I would go so far as to say that it was enthusiastically dry-humping the leg of philosophy while manually pleasuring Existentialism (and yes I am perfectly aware that Existentialism is a philosophy don’t ruin my fucking metaphors).  But it wasn’t philosophical, like any situation where someone is dry-humping your leg the humper isn’t totally satisfied and the humpee now has a dry cleaning bill.

Now the movie is set in the future, we aren’t given a hint as to how far in the future it is taking place but it is the future.  From the opening scene you would think it was a dystopian future as our intrepid hero is sitting in a post Cherynobalesque room pounding away at a pristine manual typewriter (more on that later).  But you would be wrong Internet it wasn’t a dystopian future, it was just a shit-hole (guess the future wasn’t as advanced as I hoped) enter the flashback.

Before getting into the meat of the flashback let me explain a bit about the future.  From the opening of this movie one would assume that the world was post-apocalyptic well maybe not totally post-apocalyptic more like the next door neighbor to post-apocalyptic.  You know the one whose yard is over-grown with weeds and the house that is falling apart because of neglect.  The kind of neighbor you wouldn’t loan something too because you know you would never see that item ever again.  However you would be wrong, because the future is bright and shiny which we discover during the flashback.  The future is so bright (unfortunately there are no shades) that now any part of your body that is broken, discolored, missing, backwards, partially extra-dimensional or just kind of ugly can be replaced.

(cue the announcer)

“Is your gall bladder an unflattering shade?”

“Do your ovaries travel through time because of relativistic blue shifting?”

“No problem!  We can replace them with a new one in any of a 1,000 colors for only 1,956.326,657,945,127,586 payments of $20,000!  Act now…”

Our intrepid hero works for The Union and yes he is a repo man.  Now I can hear your next question “What if I can’t pay for my shiny new heart and he comes to collect, how does he not kill me?”  Well dear Internet he does kill you.  Cuts you open, yanks it out and then takes a few moments to wash it off in your sink.  This was one of the first things that made be go “hmm…” at first I thought ok, maybe the corporations have taken over everything but no this is not the case as there is still a Federal government.  Then I thought “well maybe they worked a deal where the Union men are allowed to rip out your replacement organs willy-nilly” but I soon found out that this was not the case as our hero gets yelled at by his boss because he walks through the sales floor with half-a-dozen repo’d livers.  The bosses argument being that if you scare them they will pay for the replacements up front instead of financing them.  Additionally we also see our hero (later on in the movie) yelling at his son to stop video taping our hero’s best buddy removing a kidney in the front yard.

This also bring me to another point.  Apparently in a future where a liver, heart or any other internal organ can be replaced with an artificial one the I-Phone is still the pinnacle of cellphone technology.  Oh and one last sticking point for me… the future is so advanced that they can replace a liver (one of the most complicated organs in the human body) with an artificial one which works perfectly but you still have to sign a paper contract?  Really?  Paper?  Seriously?  And the repo jobs are handed out as paper assignments… um… Ok let me get this straight.  You have a gadget that allows you to scan anyone you want for fake organs and it will tell you instantly if they are past-due on say their right lung.  But the boss hands you job sheets on actual paper?  Hmm, nope.  Sorry I ain’t buyin’ it.

Ok so where was I?  Oh right Remy banging away on a type-writer, cue the flashback.  Now we see a lovely couple making their way into their apartment for some sexy time.  She is slowly pulling down lover boys pants and what is this?  Someone is in the apartment!  Oh NOES!  Remy stands up and tells lover boy that he is from the Union and that lover boy is past due on his liver.  Lover boy stammers that he can pay, Remy says “That isn’t my department.” and then tasers lover boy.  Lover girl for some reason thinks that Remy is going to ravish her (which he isn’t) she then tries to hit Remy with a lamp and Remy ends up tasering her as well.  Why he didn’t do that to start with escapes me but moving on… Remy advises lover boy that he is legally required to ask him if he wants an ambulance standing by and then slices him open.

We then find out that Remys good buddy Jake (Forrest Whitaker) used to beat him up in grade school and then they joined the Army together.  They are both now repo men and apparently they are really good at their jobs.  While stopped at a stop light Jake points to a fat guy standing on a busy street corner and bets $20 that the guy is past due.  Remy accepts the bet and they scan him and discover that he has 2 days left to pay.  Then Remy rolls down the window and makes a derogatory comment to the guy who ends up running off into the crowd (remember this event for later).

They continue cruising down the street eventually ending up near the dock yards.  While discussing life and how good it is for them they scan a ship in the harbor and the past due gadget goes haywire.  Apparently there are 500 past due replacements on board the ship and our heroes strap up and get to work.  After murdering a ship full of debtors and reclaiming the past due items they return to the office to get paid.  While the boss (Liev Schreiber) is counting them out he recommends to the pair that they should stop working the pink slips and go freelance looking for nests of debtors instead.  Now we hit the conundrum (dun-dunt-dun) it turns out that Remys wife does not like his job and has been trying to get him to switch to Sales but Jake has been trying to get him to stay in Repo.

Conflict! Oh fate you are so unkind what a cruel choice to force on someone…

What will Remy do?

Will he take the path of domestic bliss and safety or will he pursue the dangerous job of Repo and keep Jake happy?

Tune in tomorrow to find out!

While Remy is making that decision we cut to a wholesome family and friends Bar-B-Que.  We are at Remys house and apparently he does not serve buns with his hotdogs… hmm that is a little odd dontcha think?  Jake gets a call from a cabby who has a debtor for a fare, and Jake asks Remy if it is cool that he does a quick job before coming back to the party.  Remy reluctantly agrees and Jake runs out front to do a quick kidney retrieval.  While this is happening Remys wife gets suspicious (remember she doesn’t like his Repo work) and she walks out into the front yard and sees Jake carving up some poor schlub in the back of a taxi.  She understandably gets upset and storms back into the house, Remys son curious as to why his mother is upset walks out front and then starts taping Jake doing his thing.  Remy intervenes, erases the video and sends his son back inside.

After the party is over Remys wife has packed her shit and is leaving the house with son in tow.  Remy pleads with her to stay, she gives him the ultimatum to either move to Sales or lose his wife and kid.  So Remy does the logical thing and goes drinking with Jake.  Jake is desperately trying to convince Remy to stay in Repo and while Remy is making googly eyes at the blues singer (Beth played by Alice Braga she will be important shortly) he convinces Remy to do one last job before making his decision.  The fateful last job (dun-dunt-dunnnnnn).

Remy goes to collect the heart of a recording artist, a black recording artist who has hit bad times (oooh a cliché how exciting!).  The artist is not surprised to see Remy and asks him if he is from the IRS.  Remy tells him that he is from the Union and he is here for his heart.  The artist asks if he can finish the song he is working on, Remy agrees and then gushes out that he is actually a big fan of the Artist and loves his music.  This brings a smile from the Artist who asks Remy if he wants to help mix the track and then does a line of drugs (woohoo more cliché).  The track gets finished and Remy gets down to business, he has the Artist lay down on the floor and breaks out his defibrillator.  After promising to deliver the completed song Remy gives him the juice.  But OH NOES!?! the defibrillator malfunctions and Remy is thrown across the room.

Cut to black.

We next find Remy waking up in a hospital surrounded by his Boss and Jake.  While chatting Remy discovers that his own heart has been replaced apparently the malfunctioning defibrillator has somehow scarred Remys heart so badly it is a mass of scar tissue.  Remy heads home a few days later only to discover that his wife has changed the locks, she basically tells him to fuck off and he slouched off to Jake’s apartment.  A few days pass and Remy goes out on a job to reclaim a kidney, he tasers the guy and as he gets ready to slice and dice he finds his hand shaking and he just can’t bring himself to cut the guy open.

Hmm, what?  You openly mock people who are not quite past due.  You have killed thousands of people by reclaiming their artificial organs and now you can’t cut open some poor schmuck for a kidney?  Really?  Did they give you an artificial conscience while they were digging around in your chest?  How much did that fucker cost?

Remy lies to Jake about the job saying that it went fine.  Remy takes a stab at doing Sales and is of course an absolute failure at it.  Past due notices start to pile up on Remys heart and he makes a few jokes with Jake about who the Boss would send after him.  A few weeks later Jake confronts Remy and says that the Boss claims that Remy never turned in the kidney and Jake thinks he didn’t do the job.  Jake grabs Remy and off they go to a bombed out tenement/camp (possibly to prove Remys manhood) and he proceeds to taser random people and then scans them for overdue organs.  He finds a few and then screams at Remy that they aren’t going to leave until Remy claims a few organs.  Jake runs off to find more targets and Remy sits there incisively.  He sits there so long that some runs up and brains him with a rock and down Remy goes into unconsciousness.

Remy wakes up a short time later and discovers Beth lying in a pool of her own filth.  He picks her up and takes her to a hotel where he cleans her up and dries her out (oooh another cliché a blues singer with a drug problem shocking).  While she sleeps he scans her and discovers that most of her is artificial and she is past due on everything and in fact Remy is close to passing the point of no repayment himself.  Remy makes his way into the office and goes into the back room where they scan in reclaimed parts.  He scratches off the bar code for a kidney and starts to manually enter the serial numbers of Beth’s past due organs.  While he is checking her out of the system Jake walks in and confronts Remy.  There is a scuffle and Remy runs off.

Remy and Beth pack up their stuff and flee from the hotel to the post Cherynobalesque building we saw him in at the beginning of the film.  While this is happening the Boss is handing out repo notices and tries to get Remys to Jake who refuses to take it and the job ends up going to a Repo who was on suspension for violent behavior.  In the mean time Remy and Beth are “shopping” (read dumpster diving) for their new squat.  As Beth picks over a particular pile she finds a pristine manual typewriter in its original case and she gives it to Remy as a present.  Remy then proceeds to write his memoirs on the backs of paper forms he found in the rubble while having rather dull sex with Beth in their hovel.

Then one fine morning while children are playing out front Beth hears someone coming for them.  OH NOES! It is the Repo Man, he has found their little love nest.  They manage to ambush him with the worlds oldest trap (a tarp covering a hole in the floor).  While enjoying the post-ambush glow the floor gives out and Beth tumbles down to the floor below damaging her replacement knee.  Fearing that they would be found again they decide to try to hop a plane out of the country but Remy insists that they make a stop first.  They head to the Union office and Remy beats up a replacement lung mascot and takes his costume.  He makes his way into the Boss’s office and in no uncertain terms tells the Boss that he (Remy) will kill any Repo that is sent after him.  The Boss reveals that because of Remys previous attempt to take himself and Beth out of the system all reclaimed replacements have to go back to the corporate office.  Remy then tasers the Boss and leaves.  As satisfying as that particular scene is (I mean who doesn’t love an asshole getting his just desserts) this is not Remys primary goal.  In fact what he is really after is a pair of scan jammers that were taken off some debtors earlier in the movie.  With his newly acquired jammers he makes his way to the airport along with Beth who has managed to bandage up her knee the best way she can (i.e. she wraps the bleeding wound with a scarf).

Here is where things start to go totally off the rails for me.  The airport is in cahoots with the Union and has scanners that check for past due replacements.  Now if I were running an airline/airport I would tell the Union to suck it and I would actively advertise flights for debtors to get the hell out of the country.  Seriously think about the profit margins you would get from people trying to flee for their very lives.  Anyway, they two fugitives make it through the scanners but one of the guards notices the blood running down Beth’s leg and insists that she cannot board a flight without having her leg looked at first.  The guards whisk them off to a security office and while they are walking along Remy manages to ditch the scan blockers.  They get to the office, it is discovered that Remy and Beth are fleeing the country and a fight starts in a tiny office.  Our heroes manage to take out the guards and flee the scene but not before coming face to face with Jake who is on the wrong side of security glass.  Some significant looks are traded (dripping with all sorts of emotion) and the heroes flee the airport.

Beth insists that they get her knee replaced before they continue fleeing the country so they head off to a black market surgeon for a replacement.  Coincidentally as they are leaving the surgeon the building is raided by Repo Men looking for a nest of debtors.  Jake and Remy have the “big fight” where it is revealed that Jake intentionally sabotaged Remy’s defibrillator so that Remy would have to get a replacement heart and keep working as a Repo Man (to pay off the heart) and then Jake  smashes Remy in the face with a multi-ton crane hook.  Remy, bloodied gets up manages to taser Jake and he and Beth flee into the basement running from the other Repo Men.  They end up in a dead-end and while questioning where in the hell the other debtors went to, the wall goes up and they get yanked in.  Remy is thrown up against the wall and a tough looking woman puts a unsilenced revolver to his head and tells him to give her one good reason he shouldn’t die.

At this point I had a full body seizure.  Seriously, it was reminiscent of a grand mal seizure mixed with a Tourettes outburst.  The building is being raided and you threaten to give away your hiding spot by firing a UNSILENCED gun into the head of someone you just rescued.  Really?  REALLY?

Anyway, Remy lifts up his shirt to reveal his surgery scar and he is allowed to live.  Remy and Beth then hatch the idea that if they break into the corporate offices they can close all of the files so that no one owes.  They kidnap the Boss and after questioning him they find out they have to find the pink door.  After breaking into the building they make their way through the building and end up in a clean room filled with technicians servicing replacement parts.  The room is filled with people in clean suits FILLED with people in clean suits.  Guess what happens, go ahead take a guess.  Ok ready?  NO ONE DOES ANYTHING.  They all look up and go right back to work.

At this point I think either a vein/artery burst in my brain or I simply stroked out.  Still not entirely sure which happened.

Beth and Remy make it to the Pink Door, ok I am sorry but at this point I started to giggle uncontrollably I could not help but think of this.  Anyway, there is a big fight scene where Remy and Beth take out a dozen Repo Men.  Our heroes desperately try to think of a way to get past the pink door when Remy remembers that Beth’s eyes are replacements so they scan her eyes and as the door opens the Boss and Jake come out of the elevator in a rush they (Remy and Beth)  go behind the pink door.  Only to discover that there are no keyboards in the room only scanners.  [insert gasp of surprise] What are our heroes going to do?  Well apparently have a pseudo-sexual encounter as they cut each other open and scan their replacement parts back into the system.  Ok, sorry nope not buying it.  If you have a replacement heart and someone cuts you open and jams a full size scanner into your body cavity to scan the bar code on your replacement heart you are not going to do several things:

1. Enjoy the experience
2. Successfully scan the damn thing (pesky internal organs)
3. Live through the experience, at all.

Jake and Boss eventually make it into the room and discover that Remy and Beth are no longer in system.  The Boss starts to throw a kniption and Jake shoots him in the face.  Our heroes (+ Jake) make their way to the tropics and live happily ever after off the proceeds of the memoirs Remy wrote about his time as a Repo Man.

The End.

Or is it? Mwuahahahahahahahahaha!

Ok the surprise ending was not a surprise.  Sorry folks but we have the ultimate in cliché endings.  As it turns out the blow to the head from the crane hook has damaged Remy’s brain so that he is now in a permanent coma.  Remy is now hooked up to a virtual world (thanks to Jake) living a happy internal life.  Jake ends up using all of the reclaimed parts from Beth to pay off Remy’s outstanding balance on his heart and happy new world.